Harris,
"Legacy media must die," Elon Musk posted on his own media platform, X – which he no doubt would like to see as the inevitable replacement.
As co-chair of Trump's so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Musk has proposed eliminating all $535 million budgeted for public broadcasting – and House Speaker Mike Johnson is already on board.
It's small potatoes compared to Musk's purchase of Twitter in 2022 – which, at $44 billion, cost more than 80 times as much as the full amount allocated for public broadcasting annually.
Not only do NPR and PBS offer beloved programs like All Things Considered and Sesame Street, but they also provide a nationwide network of stations offering local news, educational programming, and critical support for the emergency alert system.
While corporate news outlets like ABC News and The Washington Post capitulate to Trump with bogus legal settlements and self-censorship, and as disinformation runs wild on social media, NPR's more than 1,000 public radio stations reach over 98% of Americans, including some of the most isolated parts of rural America.
Former NPR executive Eric Nuzum warns that "The most vulnerable stations serving the most vulnerable people are going to be the ones that are hurt the hardest. We're talking about very rural parts of the United States."
Send a message to your members of Congress today: Public broadcasting is an essential resource worth preserving. Protect NPR and PBS funding now!
NPR spokesperson Isabel Lara emphasizes that public broadcasting supports local journalism, including sports and cultural coverage: "Cutting public media funding means cutting funding to local communities."
Although federal funding for public broadcasting has faced threats in the past, NPR reports that this time, the scale and intensity of criticism from Trump and Musk suggest "it would be unwise to assume that events will play out as they have in the past."
Musk and fellow DOGE head Vivek Ramaswamy's plan to cut $2 trillion in government spending is highly unrealistic, considering that would be a full one-third of the total $6.1 billion federal budget, and that only 16% of that $6.1 billion is set aside for non-defense "discretionary" programs, excluding Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
Musk's own company, SpaceX, relies on billions in defense funding, which neither he nor Congress seems eager to touch.
Public broadcasting, by contrast, is an easy target for the billionaire budget-slashers. The nation's entire public broadcasting budget could be covered many times over by trimming the Pentagon budget, or implementing a common-sense wealth tax on billionaires like Musk and Ramaswamy.
Act now: Urge Congress to save NPR and PBS! Keep full funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Thank you for valuing this national treasure!
Robert Reich
Inequality Media Civic Action
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